read it through, might agree with me that of all my experiences the
following line of events had been the most deciding for the forming
of my present way of thinking. If I were a pious believer I could say
that Providence had selected some people to help me in taking this
road. But, as I am not, I keep exclusively the accidental sequence of
unavoidable chain of the events responsible for making my life
richer by the experiences I tell you in the followings.
Towards the end of 1966 I had an encounter in the workshop of
the Hungarian Shipping Company where I worked as an engineer
that would highly influence my life in the future. One day I went to
see, how the assembly of the 250-HP Z-drive (a big outboard
engine for the independent propulsion of ordinary river barges),
whose plans and calculations had been mainly my work, stood.
Manual assembly work has been done by an old man, who had an
extremely high authority among his fellow mechanics. He said:
“It is a good design. But I suppose you have not done too much
assembly work.”
“Thank you”, I said, “how did you guess it?”
“Some parts are nearly native!” Native parts meant in our slang,
they are impossible to be put to place, better to “manufacture them
inside”.
“Well”, I said, “you can help us to correct our mistakes.”
He told me then that he was an engineer, but, as he was a good
mechanic, by manual work he could get more money than by engin-
eering. He also told me, he had been working all over the world at
my age.
“I would catch a train and go where I could to get more money.
And seeing the world was a fun, too.”
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“You could do it then”, I answered, ”but how to do it now?”
Well, don't forget, it was 1966, it was an exceptional thing to get
abroad even to Czechoslovakia by the travel agency IBUSZ. He
showed me a newspaper, some weeks old, and an information in it.
It stated that a new state foreign trade company had been created.
Named TESCO, it was to export mental values, i.e. to sell licences
of our inventions and to send educated people to countries in need
of them.
“This is your chance”, he said.
Actually, it was. At the next possibility I turned to my acquaint-
ance in the ministry -- he had been the man to make the agreement
with me for scholarship in the company four years before --, and
asked him about it. He said:
“It is started always by TESCO. They send us letters and ask for
our suggestion for skilled people.”
“Could you suggest me next time?”
“You would have to speak English on a high level.”
We agreed, I would study English and come back.
It has happened, at least the first half of it. My coming back be-
came a little late. I had been visiting English lessons and preparing
for a high degree examination for four years and then I started to
work overtime in translation. It took almost all my energy and the
question of my TESCO-assignment had been sent to sleep. After
that an accident pushed me return to the topic.
In the spring of 1974 my ankle got twisted, my brother-in-law
took me to the emergency and I had to endure two months at home
in plaster. Before I took up work following the removal of the plaster
from my leg, one day a thought came into my mind: “Actually why
did I begin to learn English?” Yes, to be able to apply for a TESCO
expert mission somewhere in the world. Why the hell then do I sit
here and do not try to get a mission.
I took the telephone register and looked up the phone numbers
and address of TESCO. I caught a bus and then limped to the office
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Aid-Expert
building. The gate-keeper showed me to the responsible clerk and
she offered me a place to sit down. She was very busy and made
me wait. When she finished her typing she asked:
“Are you looking for an assignment?”
“Yes”, I said, “is there a possibility?”
She informed me that she was organising new assignments for
two countries, Libya and Iraq. There were others in charge for other
countries, but no English-speaking experts were needed that time
anywhere else.
She also told me that there were good perspectives for me, only
I had to choose between Iraq and Libya. Not long before there was
an air raid by Israeli planes that resulted in the damage of an Iraqi
nuclear plant in construction. That meant, Iraq was not safe enough
for me. I chose Libya.
I had to give in translations and copies about my certificates and
my CV. They accepted my application, and permission process --
first by my employer, then by the ministry in charge -- has been
launched. In a couple of months I was called to a week-long training
course about the unusual conditions. It included also the lecture of
an interior official about intelligence and counter-intelligence. In
special briefings we have got the necessary every-day information
from experts being at home on holiday from Libya.
There remained a waiting period of some months until in 1975
we would be sent to the spot. Anyway, nothing came out of it. At the
finish, as our passports would be under issue, Mr Gromyko would
visit Libyia in the spring of 1975. It would be followed by a refusal
from the part of Libya to all our experts' missions. I did not want to let
my TESCO mission go asleep forever and went again to the clerk.
She was sorry not to be able to help, but she did not stop at that and
introduced me to a middle-aged lady -- she has been the wife of a
diplomat -- who dealt with Ethiopia.
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Ethiopian hopes
First it was a very peculiar conversation. She said after listening
to her colleague and scanning me with her sight:
“Recently a man has returned from there, as he had heard
somebody speak about shootings. You do not look a die-hard man
either.”
This impertinence drove up my blood pressure, but I tried to
keep my manner. I said to her all smiles:
“He was one man and I am another. Would you let me try it
before judging me?”
“All right, I did not mean to hurt your pride. But there goes a war
there, you can know that, if you are following the events.”
It was the spring of 1977 and the time of war between Somalia
and Ethiopia.
She became more friendly soon and asked me about the exact
practice I had.
“I am an engineer of transport and vehicles, but I have a wide
experience, especially in civil engineering.”
“A mechanical engineer has been asked for by the university
and there is need for an engineer on automotive field. Also they
need a civil engineer in the Ministry of Construction.” She was
leafing through her papers. “Do you have a CV with you?”
I gave her my Curriculum Vitae in English.
“Well”, she said, “call me by phone in two days.”
At least I saw a faint hope.
When I called her, she was again her former self.
“You have given me a CV that is good for nothing”, she was
shouting, “you have to re-write it and concentrate on what you did
and not on where.” My CV really listed my employers and may be, I
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Ethiopian hopes
did not make my activities clear enough.
I re-formulated it and brought it to her.
“OK”, she said, “it will do.”
“When can I know something?” I asked.
“It is slow work”, she answered, ”in two months our offer about
the new experts will be in the hands of the Supreme Council.” She
meant the military junta around Menghistu. “Be convinced, if you
are needed, you would go there.”
She has done a good work and, although I did not know it at that
time, I have found a sponsor in the person of the soon-to-be repres-
entative of TESCO in Ethiopia. He would go there in a month and
would take with him the papers.
Some months had passed. I got a call from the executive at
TESCO that the Ethiopian authorities had accepted my person, and
the authorisation process at the Ministry of Industry has been
launched. The lady also informed me that I was offered on the first
place to the university and the offer was accepted. Our ministry
would ask the company for my transfer to their personnel and it
could take half a year. I had a dilemma then: did I have to advise my
bosses about it or wait, until they would be informed by the ministry.
I waited and it was good. In a few months I got into a bad situation
and would have to leave the company, as during this half year there
had happened other things, too. At my employer feudal conditions
had been becoming stronger, the closed clique having come into life
somewhat earlier was stepping on every potential competitor, either
for being afraid of their abilities, or simply, because they wouldn't
line up behind the group. I felt a double danger for both reasons. A
rejection or disagreement from the part of the employer could have
been fatal for my mission.
I informed TESCO about my move. The woman was angry first,
but promised me to re-route the transfer documents of the ministry
to my new workplace. However, there was a great risk in getting the
consent of management in a new place. Anyway, as I was visiting
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my would-be boss once more, I informed him of two points: that I
had been given permission from the shipyard to apply for an all-day
intensive course of Russian, it would last from the middle of June a
whole month, thus being a burden on my working time for two
weeks at my new employer, and that I had been selected for the
abroad mission and for it there was a certain probability to come
true. My boss said OK, he would not block my way. This has
happened as he said, I experienced an absolutely honest behaviour
both from his part and from the part of the responsible manager.
I had been working for one year for my new employer, the
Machine Tool Works, when the official process was finished. In the
meantime I had done some short business trips to several count-
ries, about them I have given account. Arriving from Moscow in
March 1979 at my workplace, my colleagues received me with
mixed remarks. I learned that the Personnel Director had got a letter
from the ministry about my transfer.
“Is there any problem?” I asked dr. K.
“Oh, yes”, he said, “that country is very hot, you are not advised
to go there.” He said it with an earnest face, but he was joking.
“But, please, tell me, if there is any obstacle.” I have not been
assured.
“Well”, he said, “you told me it was not very probable you would
succeed.”
“I am waiting for 12 years for this possibility.” It was true and
false at the same time.
“You spoke me about it at the beginning. I told the director I
would not block your way.”
I began to feel better. He told me, the paper has been sent back
to the ministry signed. But he was resenting the business.
I called the lady in TESCO. She was in a good mood.
“You shall come to me and give me the necessary photographs
for your passports”, she said, “and you have to take part in a brief-
ing.”
I told her I had taken part already years before. She did not
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Ethiopian hopes
insist. She said my trip was expected in June.
My wife was very happy from the news that our dreams at last
could come true. In two days her humour turned to worse. I had to
speak to the executive taking care of experts abroad. She said I
would have to travel without my family. Only after I got my housing
facilities would they permit my family to follow me. I promised my
wife I would do everything to help her follow me as soon as possible.
At the company it was known as a fact that I would leave for
Africa. On my place a young man was found, but he would not come
until I left. He would be short on my place and then there would be a
great transformation in company structure, with six of the seven top
managers to retire.
My colleague from the room was to have a business trip to
Bangladesh in May. He had to go to take the same vaccinations I
was. His arm ached and he had fever. When he returned, he said he
would not go to Africa for any sum. As he was arriving there and the
door of the plane was opened the heat was so oppressing he almost
fainted. Well, he could not drive my courage away.
During my last weeks intrigue has not rested. I have got a call
from a man, whom I did not know, but I would. He introduced himself
as one of my would-be colleagues at the Addis Ababa University. He
wanted to see me. I told him how to get to our home and waited.
He came with his wife. First I had the impression that they would
be helpful. Later I realised the opposite. But then they told us all we
wanted to hear. We put a lot of questions, they answered patiently.
In the meantime he also got what he wanted. It was he on the first
place to make my mission last only two years by convincing
Ethiopian officials that his colleague from the Budapest Technical
University would be a better lecturer than me. As a lecturer I could
have got extension to my term automatically. Thus I became an
expert for the Ministry of Transport instead of a lecturer. And in the
coming years it would be arranged that transport experts would go
home after two years, while lecturers would get their extension.
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Hope realised
After his visit I went to the TESCO and tried to be informed. I
learned that my host company in Ethiopia has been changed for the
ministry. (I did not know then about the intrigue mentioned above.)
At that moment I did not care about it, I was convinced I could do
what was expected of me.
I got my vaccinations and was ready to leave. My flight has been
scheduled to June 18, but, as I had arranged my leave from the
company and went to take my passport and money, I was told the
Ethiopian Airlines cancelled their Frankfurt-Addis Ababa flight that
week. The next flight would be one week later. I spent the week in
my flat at home. Heat from weather was overwhelming and I did as
little physically as I could and tried to get acclimatise to the African
heat even more intense (then I didn't know that, because of the high
altitude, in Addis Ababa there is only 65 degrees F all the year
round). The week of waiting has passed and I went to take my place
on the air-plane. For that week's flight another expert has been
given the pass. He was selected for the Addis Ababa Ministry of
Construction. We first met in the vaccinating station and after that at
our “mother”, the executive taking care of us in mission.
The first leg of the trip has been to Frankfurt-am-Main. It was
undertaken by our national airlines, the last place to hear our own
language. The flight was somewhat more than one hour, and we
have got our lunch on the plane. The Ethiopian plane was due early
afternoon, but something was out-of-order. The information desk
forecast it for about midnight, but our time could not have been
utilised as we had no visas and on the airport there was no way of
securing one. There was another problem. About 150 pounds of
baggage has been with me and the cloakrooms have been closed
because of the latest terrorist attacks all over the world. There was
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Hope realized
only one way: to wait and have an eye on the baggage.
Even the information service was faulty -- or too careful --. First
our gate number has been given false, and we had to move with all
the baggage a quarter of a mile to the actually right gate. It all went
as if we had been in the Soviet Union. The baggage has been taken,
but was placed beside the plane, and everyone had to lift his own
baggage onto the cart. The plane has been almost empty. As soon
as the Ethiopian folk music sounded and the air-conditioning began
to work I tried to sleep. The hostess gave me a pillow and a rug to
cover my body. The latter has not been needed, it was very hot. My
sleep would not come. I had my contact lenses on and also we have
got the first dinner. There were also my valuables in my pockets and
I was afraid for them.
The hostesses in their national dresses were extremely pretty.
Their face have been European, only black. I had learned much
about Ethiopia from a book of a compatriot who, as a jobless doctor,
accepted the offer of an Ethiopian ras (king) in 1921 to be his own
doctor. He stayed in the country 15 years, has been serving other
kings, even ras Tafari Makonnen for a time, before he became Haile
Selassie I. He left the country after the uprising against the emperor
in 1936 followed by the Italian occupation. I knew from his book that
the greatest uniform nationality in the country was the Amhara and
they had a Semitic origin. This is the reason, why their faces are
more European than Negroid. Only their hair is curly from the many
centuries of cross-breeding with Negroid people by chance.
On the plane my neighbour was from Addis Ababa and, how-
ever we changed addresses, we have never met once more. On the
plane he gave me very useful information. Our first stop has been in
Rome. We could stay in the plane during refuelling. It was a 40-
minute break, after that we flew over the Mediterranean to Cairo.
We have been shown how to save ourselves in the case of emerg-
ency. The late-night dinner -- or very early breakfast -- has not been
omitted. In Cairo it has been already dawn. We could see all the
tourist attractions from the town to the Pyramids. The colour of the
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sand was between grey and yellow. Again forty minutes, then take
off.
Khartoum. It looked like dry mud. Nothing to attract my eyes.
The air began to be hot. The next stop has been Addis Ababa. On
the last leg we got our lunch, but it was only a snack. It did not
interest me too much, I wanted to look down on the African
landscape. For a long time it looked like the Moon. There was no
trace of any life, only a stony desert, mountains, valleys, canyons.
Only their colour varied from grey, almost black through red, brown
to yellow. At last there was a strange announcement in the loud-
speaker, repeated in English: we were landing in Addis Ababa in 20
minutes. The land around the capital was fertile. There were
meadows with sheep, woods and small squares of cultivated land.
We have almost touched a mountain at least five thousand feet
higher than the surroundings (at that time I didn't know, but later I
could look it up, it was the Entoto) and after that the capital came
into view. With a big circle the plane avoided flying over the town
and landed.
My legs were numb for not using them so long and first I could
hardly make the few steps in the aisle. Slowly they got their life back.
Through the window the airport building could be seen. It was a
modern white, pretty one. On the sighting terrace there were
people. We were led to the entrance and there a big confusion
followed. Slowly I could realise directions, places. We went through
the passport control with no problem. Then the baggage had to be
received, but it was almost an hour, until they have been carried out
to us.
With the customs it was much slower. Although there were no
goods to declare as we took with us only our personal cloths, the
necessary equipment to live here for at least one year, there were
the locals arriving from abroad and it took a long time to check all of
their items. We could have avoided it, had our representative in
Addis Ababa, John S., not received a false telex about the
cancelling of our route again. We had to make our way through the
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Hope realized
coin or a note. I did not have any smaller piece of money as a five
dollar note, I gave it to the porter. I soon learned that he was over-
paid ten times.
Outside transit we could go to change money. By local coins I
could phone to Alex, the man, who had come to my home. He has
not been home, but his wife was and she phoned to John, the
representative. About 26 hours after that our plane took off at home,
we were met by him. Being young -- I was 38 then -- does not mean
you are not tired. Without sleep it was a long trip.
John took us to the hotel where our experts were living, until
moving into their flats. That time would be six weeks for me, the
shortest that far, and there was somebody for six months in the
hotel. It was the “Ras“ hotel in the very centre of the city, not far from
the circular square with the Ethiopian lion statue, where the north-
south running Churchill Road crosses the eastern highway leading
to Revolution Square then to the airport. Here the Ethiopian
Commercial Bank was situated that could confuse visitors with its
circular plan.
We have got our rooms almost next to one another on the first
floor. My room had a large bathroom, with a locked door on its other
side to the next room. It would cause me trouble later. On the reports
of Alex at home I expected a heavy rain in Addis, but it was a clear
weather that received me here. That time I did not know the time-
table of rainy season. As we were moving into town in John's car it
could have been in any town at home. Sometimes I saw people in
dark suits with a Girardi hat on their heads. They were ordinary men
from my country. My astonishment came only at sighting their black
faces. Drawing nearer to the centre we saw people in ordinary
Ethiopian dresses, women in shamma, men in gabby. The first can
be characterized as a diaper material wound up as a sari in India.
The latter is a similar textile, only made by multiple weaving to make
it thicker. It is worn as a poncho in South-America.
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The first days of an Aid-Expert
John left us with the invitation for lunch the next day. Soon Alex
appeared. He took us with him for dinner. The 3 p.m. rain has pass-
ed precisely and again there was clear weather, with the sun sett-
ing.
Most of the Hungarian aid-experts were living in a closed living
estate of 2-story apartment houses. Alex lived there with his family.
They had one son, about the age of that of mine. With the invitation
Alex was actually doing a mission, his wife instructed him to
squeeze all news out of us. During dinner we emptied our brains to
them and they gave further help in the form of advice. One of them
hit me at once, it was a useful piece. The woman said in the country
the venereal diseases represented 120 percent of the population.
How it could be? There were multiple diseases in the same individ-
ual and also the embryos, not born yet, had their share. It made me
forever incapable against a local girl.
We also spoke to them about events seen on TV at home, e.g.
the execution of the innocent young American journalist in
Nicaragua by a military man when he was lying on the ground. To
understand a person living far from home in Africa is hard for
someone who hasn't tried it. Life there is determined mainly by a
very close circle of people of identical nationality, in my case
Hungarian, who are living there, they know only what is happening
there. Even international periodicals raise only a limited interest,
and news from home come only if somebody brings them. It goes
without saying, today there are other pos